Spiritual Gifts

On Tuesday’s Ed and I have been getting together for our weekly meetings. We talk about what I am processing, what I am reading, how my ministry areas are going, and whatever else comes to mind. Today we also happened to talk about my sermon on Sunday and how I plan to approach it. I am very excited to get the chance to preach for the next two Sundays, although I m also very nervous. I have never preached part of a series before. All of my preaching experience comes from school and the Sussex Salvation Army, where I had the ability to preach on whatever I wanted to preach on.

However, it seems like everyone is very excited to hear me speak, and oddly enough every already seems to have the mentality that I am going to be an amazing speaker. To be honest I do not know why everyone already has that belief. They have seen me do the morning announcements and Lee has heard me speak at Extended Play. But overall I do not feel like I have done anything out of the ordinary, nor do I feel like I have shown exceptional skill at giving the announcements that would cause people to automatically have faith in my abilities. But at the same time, I suppose that is part of giftedness. We all have the tendency to take our gifts and abilities for granted and assume that is just a normal part of life. So maybe in my few speaking times people have seen something in me that I simply take for granted.

However, at the same time, there have been times in the past when I spoke to different audiences and had too much confidence in myself. Those times seemed to turn out disastrous. So part of speaking is also remembering that my abilities are not my own, but that they are given to me by God for the edification of the body of Christ and the glorification of God.